Steve Fossett is still missing since his plane plane disappeared on September 3 while searching for areas to attempt a new land speed record. Searching approximately 7,500 square miles, local authorities and the Air Force have yet to find the missing adventurer, but some high-tech images and assistance from the Internet community may have aided in spotting Fossett’s missing plane.

Web users have come to the aid of rescuers by examining numerous satellite images using a service by Amazon.com called Mechanical Turk. According to AVweb, an aviation news resource, it is possible that one of the Web spotters found Fossett’s missing Bellanca Citabria Super Decathlon on a mountain side.

“Sure, it’s a long shot, but AVweb readers taking part in the Mechanical Turk effort to locate Steve Fossett through Google Earth imagery has found something that doesn’t look like it belongs on a mountainside. Have a close look at the accompanying image. It looks to us like it could be the fuselage and wings of a small plane. We’ll likely know soon enough if this is Fossett’s Super Decathlon (or a combination of rock and shadow that looks like it) but in the meantime, the important thing is to keep looking, ” says the posting on AVweb. “Humans are still much better at picking objects out of photos that don’t appear to belong there than computers are.”

This is not the first time the Internet community has been asked to help out with searching for something. For years, the SETI@home project has been letting volunteers offer computational power on their computer to analyze radio telescope signals for sentient life among the stars. This is one case, however, where people can feel directly involved in a project versus letting a computer do the work for them.

If this Internet search for Fossett is successful, this could mark a new trend in Web volunteers being used to help find missing people quickly over vast amounts of search area. It only makes sense: the greater number of people scouring satellite imagery will dramatically increase the odds of discovering something while using less resources. Sure, searching for Fossett’s small plane in 7,500 of rugged terrain is like looking for a needle in a haystack, but the more people you have looking for it, the greater the chance that someone is going to find something.

Reader Comments

hodar

With Satellites and multiple computers, can’t we do a compare/contrast of a photo taken last month, against a photo taken this week – then have the computer extract the differences?

So, we’ll have traffic (air and ground), home builders and maybe some trees that have been cut down. But in a comparatively ‘small’ area of interest, it’s a lot easier looking at what is ‘different’ than combing the entire area.

SalCan

hodar-
my guess would be that a plane wreck could look like anything, so telling the computer what to look for could be next to impossible. A person might have a better chance of figuring this out.

hodar

SalCan;

You didn’t read what I wrote.

I said “can’t we do a compare/contrast of a photo taken last month, against a photo taken this week “

Or, in layman’s terms – what has changed in the past week. A plane crash would be a change. The area where the plane crashed would look different today, than it did before the crash. The computer would not know what a plane crash would look like – but it would say that ‘this area is different this week, this requires further investigation'; and a human’s work would be greatly diminished to looking at only a small number of anomalies rather than the entire search grid.

pipsqueap

Searching for extraterrestrial intelligence is commendable, searching for an inflated ego that takes off without filing a flight plan, oh man…
still, life is important in the western way of thinking…..
i wouldn’t mind helping uncle sam spotting orbital photographs of punks planting IEDs just to kill Amerikans…..anywhere!
alas, bureaucrazies being what they are, good ideas don’t often come to fruition, unless they originate from the top down…
and a pip pip to dissenting opinions…..